Currently, there are a variety of systems that are designed to monitor network characteristics. Network monitoring systems tend to focus on network attributes at the networking layer and below (e.g. layers 1-3 of the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) standard). In addition, the systems tend to focus on the hardware involved. These systems are limited in the fact that they do not provide a full picture of all the applications/hardware involved in a communication at various network levels, especially at layers above the network layer. For example, signaling packets for a communication may be sent over a different path than media data. Existing systems fail to show these types of distinctions. This causes problems in diagnosing errors that may occur when a communication is sent over a network.
As an example of a current system with the above problem, consider U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0086425, which discloses a system that can discover the arrangement of all physical devices in a network. The topology that is displayed is a map of the layer 2/layer 3 devices in the network. A path between two communication devices is also determined Based on the path, the quality of service between the two communication devices can be determined. The problem with this system is that only hardware devices are tracked at layers 2 and 3. The network paths of different types of traffic at layers above layer 3 are not tracked. Thus, this system cannot diagnose errors that may occur when different types of packets are sent between different applications at layers above layer 3.
Some systems track statistics at layers above layer 3. However, these systems tend to only focus on communications at a specific point in the network. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0086336, discloses a system that does track layer 7 statistics for a subscriber at edge routing nodes. Based on the statistics, certain policies can be applied to the data. The problem with this system is that it fails to determine all the devices/applications/paths involved in a communication at layer 7. Tracking the full communication path of different types of packets at different layers is not disclosed. Only a sampling of layer 7 statistics of a communication is taken at a specific point in the network. As a result, specific types of errors cannot be diagnosed because the full path of the communication at various layers is not tracked.